


Through the Looking Glass(es)

by QuillHeart



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Everyong Gets Along, Feel-good, Fluff and Angst, Friendship is Magic, Gen, Getting Older, Group banter, Lupin is a Little Weasel, Multi, Slice of Life, thief snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-09-22 11:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17059205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: “My dear, we’re here today because…”He sighed, his gaze lingering on his reflection in a nearby mirror.“…I think I need glasses.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Dysfunctional Christmas! Just a short thing I cooked up a while back and finally got around to polishing ~~while I should be working~~. 
> 
> I end up with the urge to write on this every time I visit my Jigen cosplayer's house, because we always end up driving around bumbleton South Dakota at night poking fun at signs in town and complaining about the infamous Peach Tree Street ~~Horror Stories~~ Adventures from Atlanta.
> 
> ...That thing with the superglue and blood may have really happened...at a hotel in South Dakota. Don't even ask about the googlie eyes.

A Tuesday afternoon at a randomly-selected commercial business in a randomly-selected neighborhood.  For once, it wasn’t a business where their tiny syndicate had goings-on with the people in the back.  No, today, the dynamic duo of the Lupin Group was patronizing a legitimate business for a legitimate reason.

The fashionable little store was simple and clean, sunlight flooding in from the east-facing windows. A myriad of merchandise lined the walls, tucked into neat rows on shelves, with the occasional mirror hung up along the way. The floor was almost entirely open in the middle, minus a checkout desk at the back and a waiting chair or two. It was currently before lunch, so the place was deserted, too; even the streets on the palm-lined drive had quite a few parking spots left, and the beach beyond was enjoying its emptiness by presenting a sparkling view.

Because this neighborhood was upscale, for the people who worked there, two men in sharp suits walking in did not, at first, seem odd. But upon closer inspection, they probably noticed a strained tension between the two—not the least of which reason was because the one in black appeared to be marching the one in red forward by the nape of his neck.

“Do you accept walk-ins?” Jigen demanded once they’d made it close enough to the counter at the back that he didn’t have to shout.  Lupin, against his hand, was constantly trying to get away, like some horse that didn’t want to be lead to the starting gate.

“Y-Yes…?” offered the middle-aged woman at the desk dubiously.

 _“Date on the Riviera my ass,”_ Lupin grumbled under his breath, trying to shrug his shoulder to break Jigen’s grip.  He looked back at the curb balefully, where Fujiko had driven off with the convertible.

“Shoosh, _darling._ ” It didn’t work, and Jigen merely tightened his hold.  “You got an opening _now_?”

“…Maybe?” the woman replied, crow’s feet tightening.  Her gaze flicked dubiously between the two of them, suddenly very aware that there was a bull in her china shop, which was made of glass from shelves to cases to wares.

Lupin clicked his tongue and pushed Jigen away by the ribcage, quickly whirling on his heel.  “This really isn’t necess—”

“Good,” stated Jigen, cutting him off.  He slung his entire arm around his boss’s neck, effectively corralling him back toward the desk. 

“ _Dammit_ , Jigen—”

“Can I help you?” asked a second woman, a younger one, appearing out from the door by the desk before the two men could come to blows about it.  She was petite and brown-haired, completely unassuming and lost in a lab coat, probably not much older than twenty.

As she arrived, the pair of customers were staring each other down from a foot away, like matching statues.  And then, with matching growls, they suddenly looked down upon _her_.

Naturally, when faced down by two gangsters who were about to fight each other, a good response was to dodge behind something. The other was to go wide-eyed and stock still, until you could figure out which _direction_ you needed to dodge. 

The latter was what she did.

Noticing this, Lupin sighed through his nose and then sent his partner a dry glare so sharp that it could have cut the very glass around them.

 _Look what you made me do_ , it read.

Jigen staunchly ignored it, his silent and professionally pleasant smile clear as day:

_‘S not my fault you’re a troublesome prick._

“C-C-Can I help…you…? Sirs?” squeaked the frightened ophthalmologist—showing a good deal of spirit, Jigen thought.

The hitman answered by looking away, and Lupin, apparently deciding his partner was no longer his prey for the time being, shoved his hands in his pockets.  His sullen glare suddenly transformed into the friendliest of smiles and he leaned gratuitously into the woman’s personal space. 

“I sure hope so,” Lupin chimed with a mocking leer.  “Please tell this grim reaper of a man that I don’t need any help.”

As soon as the woman looked at Jigen, she was hit with his annoyed scowl (courtesy of his boss’s remark), visible to her from under the brim of his hat due to their height difference.  She quickly turned back to Lupin for help, a nervous tick on her otherwise frozen smile.

 _Hyee?!_ her face read.

But the strange and dapper man in red just kept smiling back, not giving an inch—and perhaps, it could be said, stealing a few.  It was a devious trick they’d perfected over the years to get people to trust him—even if Jigen had just performed the act accidentally.

 _Dammit_ , Jigen grumbled to himself.  At this rate, he’d never get the job done; Lupin would weasel out of it for sure.

“A-a-and s-so wh-which one of you is the patient t-to-today…?” the young woman persisted at a tremble.  Behind her, the older woman was watching them all closely, but hadn’t yet brought out the broom to sweep them out of the place, for which Jigen was grateful.  Lupin had a knack for such things, when he wanted to.

“That would be him,” Jigen stated promptly, not about to be outmaneuvered—by Lupin _or_ a broom.

“O-oh…” Something akin to relief came over the younger woman’s face as she turned back to Lupin—at which point she froze again, realizing instinctively that he was not exactly safe either.  “And wh-what is the reason for your visit today, th-then, Mister…um…?”

After a long second of gazing into her eyes like he was going to enjoy sucking out her soul, Lupin’s smile suddenly fell, and an unimpressed gaze rolled over to Jigen.  He never once moved his body. 

“If I do this,” Lupin muttered lowly, “will you leave me alone about it?”

“Absolutely.” Jigen nodded once, folding his arms with a triumphant smile somewhere down in his gut.  “But you gotta do it honestly.  I’ll give Fujiko your bank account numbers if you don’t.  The _Swiss_ ones.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Lupin all but growled, standing up straight—only to sit back on his hips with a grumbling slouch. 

The young lamb before them had a habit of staring at Jigen’s scowl whenever Lupin’s eyes weren’t on her, which was a finely-honed preservation instinct he had to give her credit for. But as soon as Lupin turned back to her, her eyes darted back to him, and then stared, wide-eyed, waiting for the tiger’s lunge.

“Your…purpose…visit?” she squeaked.

Jigen suppressed a sigh.  With what he’d had to do the last few weeks to strong-arm Lupin here, he’d nearly forgotten how delicate normal people could be.

As she stood there, more or less rooted to the floor, Lupin’s gaze softened a little, and he went from crime boss to regular man as he shook himself out and stood up straight and tall.  He looked around the room and its cornucopia of well-lit items, hands still in his pockets and weight set on his back leg, until his gaze eventually returned. 

Alongside the pity he gave her, a very human sense of defeat fell over the criminal mastermind’s frame. 

“My dear, we’re here today because…”

He sighed, his gaze lingering on his reflection in a nearby mirror.

“…I think I need glasses.”

 

* * *

 

At first, Jigen had caught Lupin behaving strangely over the breakfast table.

Papers were strewn about, which was fairly normal for him, and a cup of hot tea sat nearby, his usual morning brew.  What was strange about the setup was how Lupin was sitting—holding up a piece of paper at arm’s length and closing one eye, then the other, in sequence.  Then, both open, he’d squint and move the printed sheet closer and farther.

“Been staring at the sun?” Jigen asked, yawning as he reached for his favorite coffee mug at this particular hideout.  It had a savanna scene, cartoonish animals dancing around on it.  Someone had even guerilla-glued googly eyes onto some of them.  It was an atrocious design, with even more atrocious alterations, but the components fit his fingers just right, which was rare because of how handling a gun so often over the years had curved them.

“N-no…”

Lupin’s hesitation caused Jigen to pause, even as he was giving Herbert the Hippo, as he’d named him, his morning smile of greeting.  Herbert, on the mug, had complementary rhine stones on his nose, thanks to one of Fujiko’s drunken crafting binges, and he couldn’t _not_ smile at that.  (Though seriously, why did they ever let that woman near a tube of glue?)

It wasn’t like she and Goemon hadn’t glued their fingers _to each other’s fingers_ once.  Lupin, who had been covered in fake blood at the time from testing a new recipe, had come out of the bathtub and stared at them like they were idiots, then proceeded to be useless because he was covered in wet chocolate-powder-based blood-syrup and couldn’t touch them, let alone the furniture.  Luckily, Jigen had been able to fish out Fujiko’s nail polish remover from the bathroom, though the scene of the shower walls still gave him nightmares.

So, now, seeing Lupin with nothing more than a piece of paper and acting a bit strange, Jigen had expected an answer about a craft project due to some crazy scheme Lupin was working on, or perhaps a fun but worthless bit of scientific trivia he’d just read about, which were the only things his weird behaviors around the house ever turned out to be. 

“Well, tell me if it’s a brain tumor, then.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Any time.”

Jigen had shrugged the whole thing off with his egregiously bedazzled mug at his lips.  It was just one of those inexplicable things Lupin did—and frankly, it wasn’t Jigen’s place to ask questions when his boss was working.

And well, if it _was_ a brain tumor, he was pretty sure he was in Lupin’s will somewhere, though he was _also_ pretty sure Lupin was going to make him go through hell and highwater (and Fujiko) to get whatever was listed there.

But that wouldn’t be such a bad way to remember him, if Lupin going batty didn’t kill him first.

 

And speaking of getting him killed, the next thing Jigen noticed was that, as they drove around, Lupin’s response time to his navigational directions got longer—or shorter, as it sometimes was:

“Peach Tree Street.”

“Is this…?”

“No, this’s ‘Palm.’”

The creak of the seat belt.  A grunt of vexation.  A block or two later:

“Maybe this…?”

“No, that’s ‘Plum.’”

A hum.  The creak of leather on the steering wheel as his knuckles tightened.

“What about this one?”

A pause, and then Jigen’s voice: “Pear.”

“What the fuck is wrong with this town?!”

“Got me.”

“Must like trees.  And alliteration.”

“Maybe.”

The hum of the engine.  The spin of the wheels.  And then, just as they were nearly on top of it:

“Turn.”

“What?”

“Here. Right here!”

“What?!”

“This’s it—”

“Fuck!”

A yank of the wheel.  A sharp swerve.  More swearing from both of them and probably the person behind them, given the honking from the cars nearby.

When they finally got on the next street and no one was protesting their place within traffic, Jigen took a deep breath and glanced over at his boss.

Lupin was patently ignoring him, the proverbial bead of sweat going down his temple.

“…You drunk or something, Lu?”

The man glanced over at him tellingly, but quickly snorted, his dark eyes back on the road with a deep frown.  “No…” He ran a hand over the back of his neck; sucked in a breath and swallowed hard.  Resettled himself in the seat, grip tight on the wheel.

Jigen glanced down at the map in his own lap, his eyebrows raising.  “All right, then.”

“It’s not that.”

“I believe you.”

A deep, annoyed breath from the other seat…and a notable deceleration of the speedometer.

“Next turn is two blocks from here.  A left.”

Another deep breath, but this time, a sigh followed it.

“Two after this stop sign, I mean.”

“…Thank you, Jigen.”

It was grudging, but also relieved.

“Mm-hm.”

Jigen’s, meanwhile, was only forgiving. 

Because a suspicion in the back of his mind was telling him something important, and this time, he had no reason to ignore it.

 

There was an incident at a restaurant, too, that Fujiko had told him about: A fancy one, in a far-flung city, one Lupin had had to call in a favor to even get a reservation.  A specific date for the two of them, to reward the hard work they had accomplished on a recent series of jobs.  It was one of those up-in-the-sky observation-deck sort of places, so dimly-lit it was basically the black-box theater version of a bistro.

And as Fujiko turned away from gazing out at the sparkling city lights below, she found her dinner partner, dressed up to the nines, frowning down at the menu like it had done him some great wrong.

But she hadn’t gotten far in life by asking uninformed questions.  So she did what she always did: she _observed_.  

The leather-bound menu was laid flat on the table before her dinner host.  First the crime boss put his temple in his hand and squinted; then, changing it to a fist, he frowned more, mostly with his brow, leaning downward.  Soon, he halved the distance between himself and the menu; rearranged his weight on his hand to do it.  Then, he blinked hard, gave the paper a laser stare, and finally gave up with a huff, cupping his cheeks in both hands.  He basically looked like a kid vexed by a multiple choice test.

But to her amazement, it didn’t end there.  While Fujiko was looking around to see who had noticed the faux pas in manners, instead of doing the sensible thing and pulling the menu very close to his face, after that, Lupin’s mouth pulled into a scowl and he pressed at his eyes, deforming the lenses this way and that.

At that point, Fujiko had sighed inwardly and looked around the room at the people that mattered—at the waiters and other patrons nearby—and then made up her mind.  With a sigh, she quietly stood up and moved her chair from the spot opposite her boss to the one beside him. 

As Lupin looked up, startled, his date sat down, fancy dress and all, and pulled the table’s votive candles into a cluster.  She situated it right next to Lupin’s menu and then whispered into his ear, “This better?”

Lupin eyed her, but soon squinted down at the paper, no longer pressing at his eyes, which were going a little bloodshot at the edges from being molested. After a moment of bending near the menu, he huffed through his nose and said, “A little bit.”

“Here,” she whispered, pushing her shoulder up against her paramore’s, “Don’t strain yourself.  Let me read it for you… _in that sexy voice you’ve always liked_.”

Lupin gave her a baleful look, but in the end, he smiled a little melancholically when Fujiko gripped his hand under the table. 

“Thanks babe,” he whispered, squeezing her hand back. 

Fujiko gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and went to work.

After this tale, Fujiko and Jigen had put their heads together and compared notes.  A certain suspicion was nigh on confirmed, but that didn’t mean they had a plan for dealing with it, just yet. 

But still, they seemed to be managing.

 

They went on like that until about a month later, the night before a heist. That day, Fujiko came out of the shower to find Lupin lying on the safehouse couch, his head tilted back on the armrest and a cold compress over his eyes and forehead.  Jigen was nearby cleaning his gun, but seemed to have stalled. As Fujiko’s slippered feet walked by, Lupin groaned in pain, like the sound of even her dainty footsteps was too much.

“Headache again?” she asked.  A quick glance revealed a robotics project scattered about the coffee table, abandoned in mid screw-twist, apparently.

“Yean…” Lupin sighed, his voice exhausted and gravelly.  “’Ve had this for _four_ _days_ now, it won’t _go_ _away.._.”

Fujiko sighed, sitting down next to him on the armrest and putting a hand on his hair as Jigen politely—but oh so silently—continued reading a book on the sectional across from them.  “You sure you want to go for it tomorrow?  Will you be ready?”

“Nothing a Tylenol and sleep won’t fix,” Lupin offered.  His voice was light, but the slouch and sigh after was less than convincing.  “Besides, I set the time, can’t stand up my date, can I?”

 _His date_ being the cops and the press and the eyes of the world.  In Fujiko’s mind, punctuality was less important than the payoff, and in Jigen’s punctuality was far less important than doing the job _right_.  They both knew it was important to Lupin’s sense of showmanship, but…

She bent down and, moving part of the wet cloth aside, set a worn palm on her lover’s forehead.  “I’ll get you a new one, how’s that sound?”

With that, she pulled up the wash cloth.

“Thanks, Lovely…” Lupin sighed, reaching up a hand to touch her cheek. 

But he missed.  He hit Fujiko square in the cheek, nails and all.  She snorted, jerking her head back, and Jigen looked over the top of his book a little higher.

“Oh, sorry,” Lupin muttered hazily.  Once Fujiko’s face carefully returned, his fingers walked along her lips, until they found their target of her jaw, and curled around there.

“That must be one hell of a headache, if your depth perception’s that messed up.”

“Must be a migraine,” Lupin admitted, sounding miserable and exhausted. 

When Lupin gazed up at her, his two observers couldn’t help but notice how unfocused and harsh his gaze seemed, eyes red and watery. It was nothing like the soft but playful light they should have had, that was so easy to get lost in as they focused on you and only you. 

“I’ll be better tomorrow,” their leader said.  “I promise.”

 

But he hadn’t been. 

Just a few days ago, in another country not far from this one:

Lupin had been hanging from the ceiling of a bank vault, doing his ninja thing down through the lasers on nothing but a wire.  Jigen had been watching him from the security control room, and Goemon had been up in the ceiling, running the cables from which Lupin hung.

They’d infiltrated the bank.  Discovered the lasers and waited for the right pattern to show up.  Synchronized their watches and lowered Lupin down, knowing they only had about five minutes to work.

And then, as he was hanging above the numbers on the safe deposit boxes, he’d suddenly stopped.

And stopped.

And waited some more.

And they only had so long before the laser pattern switched.

 _“What’s wrong?”_ Gomeon asked over the radio device each of them had on an ear. 

When Lupin didn’t respond with anything other than a frustrated huff:

“Is there some layer of security we didn’t know about?” Jigen added over the radio, for which there was a receiver in Lupin’s ear.  Jigen had disconnected the security cameras from their respective tape recorders, but he could still see the feeds coming in—and it didn’t look like there was anything vexing.  Lupin was just hanging like a spider, staring into the wall of deposit boxes like they were playing chess for his firstborn child.

Jigen checked his watch.  Two minutes.

And then, all of a sudden, Lupin said:

_“I can’t read it.”_

“What?” Jigen hissed through his comm.  “What are you talking about?”

_“The numbers…I can’t…”_

There was a decidedly long pause.  Jigen and Goemon exchanged a moment of confused silence over the airwaves.

_“I need to get closer.”_

“You can’t. The setup wasn’t made for that.”

And indeed, Lupin was hanging in such a way as to avoid touching anything, save for the box they needed. If he swung, his wire would hit the lasers.  If he leaned in, his head or feet would.

_“I know, but…”_

It also wasn’t like Lupin to just not explain the problem at a moment like this.  While he’d never been one to tell the entire truth about a heist’s payoff, their success depended on communication at times like these, and he most of all honored that—especially when he was suspended from the ceiling by one steel thread that someone else on the team controlled.

“Clock’s ticking, boss.  A minute thirty.”

 _“Fuck it,”_ Lupin grumbled decisively.  He quickly threaded his arms through the lasers and positioned his tools on a box, drilling in.  Once the lock was broken, he pulled the box out slightly on its rollers—they needed to brace the wire before he yanked the whole thing, for which there was a signal—but then, he started drilling another box.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jigen asked into the radio.  “You didn’t tell me we were hitting two.”

_“I’m doing what I need to do, shut up.  Goemon, be ready—I’ll need extra resistance from you so that I can grab both at once and my arms’re both gonna be immobilized for maneuvering.  Get ready in ten.”_

_“Understood.”_

_What the hell is he doing,_ Jigen wondered, checking his watch.

“Forty seconds,” he muttered dubiously, watching his boss through the cameras.

_“I’ll be done by then.”_

“You sure?”

_“Ready, Goemon?”_

_“Ready.”_

The plan had called for one box, which Lupin would drop right in front of.  Because they were long, they usually required two hands to pull out, and to get through the lasers, he needed to be near motionless when he did it, threading his hands around the beams from different angles as he drew the box back toward himself and into the safe zone directly around his body. 

But this situation had _two_ boxes, which were at disparate vertical levels and required an awkward reach.  Jigen drew in a breath as Lupin grabbed the original target with his right hand then dropped his left arm through the red laser web, ready to run since the sirens were sure to go off.  But Lupin had one more trick up his sleeve: he took both his legs and stuck his rubber-soled feet out against the wall of metal, underneath the red lines.  (It was heat sensitive, not pressure sensitive, so rubber didn’t set it off.)

“You aren’t seriously going to… Ah!” Jigen whispered to himself as he watched it on the screen.  But then, he remembered the ticking of his watch and hit the transmitter: _“Fifteen seconds, get out of there or we’ll be running.”_

Without a word, Lupin yanked both boxes out, all twelve or so inches of them.  He used the momentum to pull them as straight as he could, let their bottom ends fall onto his toes, and then _bounced_ them over the red gridlines into the safe zone his body occupied.  There, he again caught them on his _toes_ to support their back ends—and keep them from swinging into the lasers.

 _“Up,”_ he commanded, and Jigen simply had to watch as Goemon slapped the pulley and Lupin zipped up through the lasers—

Hitting the ceiling’s edge just in time for them to change their pattern.  Lupin whipped his feet up at the last moment to do it, throwing the boxes into the ceiling—but he managed it.  It had no doubt made a mighty noise though.

“What the hell was all that!” Jigen demanded, holding his chest as he slid down into his seat.

_“I don’t want to hear it.  Ready phase three.”_

Lupin turned his transmitter off, but quietly, over the line, Jigen heard his voice through Goemon’s, along with the soft clinking of metal:

_“Goemon. Please read these off for me.”_

There was a pause, and then the samurai’s deep voice floated through the wifi: _“55763 and 55788.”_

 _“Good,”_ said Lupin after a long sigh.  _“We got the one we need, anyway.”_

Goemon was silent, no doubt giving Lupin a long look that Lupin pretended not to notice.

 _“Jigen.”_   Lupin had turned his comm back on.  Jigen couldn’t currently see his partners, since they were in a vent above the ceiling—a place the cameras didn’t reach.  _“See you in the morning?”_

Jigen took a deep breath, arms folded and kicking back on the security desk console.  He would be here till morning in his disguise as a substitute security guard, as per the plan, but that wasn’t what was causing him pause.

 _“Jigen…?”_ came Lupin’s voice again.

Yelling at him wasn’t going to change anything.  He could lodge a professional complaint but if Lupin didn’t want to deal with it yet, he wouldn’t.  Jigen could definitely force the issue that way, but that would leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.  So, he had to do something else to resolve this.

_“Everything okay over there, Unit One?”_

There was a telling tinge of concern in Lupin’s voice, and Jigen relished it.  Lupin _deserved_ a moment of stress over him.

Taking an extra moment just to be a bastard about it, Jigen touched at his transmitter to turn it back on.  “Everything’s fine.  See you in the morning.”

Lupin sighed, sounding relieved.  Somehow, even though he couldn’t see it, Jigen could feel the tension around him release somewhat too—probably something about Goemon’s breathing evening out on the other end of the line.  _“Roger that.  Unit Two and Three out.  May the god of thieves be with you.”_

“Yeah yeah.  You owe me one for that heart attack.  Tell you what, with the winnings, I’ll take you out for a sunny day on the Riviera with Fujiko and the convertible, how’s that sound?”

_“Delightful.  Now, I’m gonna go Swiffer some vents with my mighty fine self.  Over and Out.”_

Jigen let the unit drop back down below his shirt.  Letting out a long sigh, he leaned back in the office chair, his elbows up and hands threaded behind his head.

He knew exactly what he had to do.  It just wouldn’t be pretty.

 

* * *

And that was how they’d ended up here—

“Close your left eye and tell me which line is clearer.”

—With his boss sitting eyes-first into some kind of spider-face-looking torture device that Jigen was pretty sure could kill him in six different ways, if someone had been out to get him and had modified it.  And that wasn’t even mentioning what the doc could do, while Lupin sat with his chin immobilized and his eyes seeing nothing but little letter charts.

And it wasn’t like they lived a kind life.  If someone took the opportunity and fully blinded his boss somehow, it wouldn’t be more than a week before Lupin would be begging somebody to kill him and Jigen just might do it out of sympathy—and Jigen wasn’t sure what he’d do to _himself_ , for bringing Lupin into this situation in the first place, if that all happened.

Jigen sighed as he glanced around the room, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  All that was far from likely, and he’d worked hard to make sure this place was as random (and therefore clean) as could be, but he could never be sure.  And, of course, this may have been a windowless room—which was as much a blessing as a curse for his nerves—but there was always the door to watch, too, along with the woman.

So all that was to say, Lupin might have been frustrated and chomping at the bit to leave, but Jigen was just about ready to chew through a log from fretting.

So perhaps that was why Lupin was acting the way he was:

“You know what I’d _like_ to be seeing with my left eye right about now?” he whispered playfully as he sat, his voice doing that deep-toned, chest-voice _thing_ that melted most women into puddles as easily as his wandering, attentive fingers. 

And it wasn’t just making his voice deep and gravelly; no, it was something much more dexterous than that—it was a whole ‘nother _voice_ he could use, sharpened to perfection and pulled out at moments where he needed to dominate someone, get them under his power, one way or another.

“…What?” the young woman asked dubiously, a little shiver visibly going through her back as she straightened up.

That was the exact look Jigen was afraid of: the _I’m offended but also kind of turned on and I don’t know why?_ look.

Because the “Don’t know why” part was exactly what gave Lupin an in:

“You.”

And she was the perfect target for it: fresh and pert and a hard-working twenty-two.  Jigen pegged her for an intern, or new hire, to be honest, one who had no idea what fun was.  And yet here they were in the dim lighting and a black back room, reminiscent of a VIP booth, just without the strippers and booze and suspicious sticky spots.  There was even a little black leather sofa, which Jigen could have been sitting on if he weren’t worried that Lupin was going to flee (or die) on him.

In the meantime, the poor ophthalmologist pulled back from the device, sputtering.  Upon what little of Lupin’s face Jigen could see, he saw a corner of the man’s mouth twitch up.  But not to be accused of tact, Lupin’s fingers wiggled decidedly where he cupped them on the table, and then, even unable to see, he managed to reach out to her with a playful note and catch one of her hands.

“Sir, please,” she muttered, staring first at Lupin in a blushing fluster—and then checking back at Jigen.

Jigen was standing in her blind spot, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe of the tiny exam room.  In the shadows, as was his place.  Watching over his boss, as was his duty.  And…

The woman’s eyes went wide with silent terror at his scowl, and quickly turned back around.

…intimidating hapless civilians, as was his God-given talent.

Grumbling inwardly, Jigen took a deep—and very audible—breath of displeasure and went back to surveying the scene.  “Boss, please.”

 _Boss_.  Jigen used it on Lupin the way parents used the full names of their children.  Lupin pulled back just enough to give Jigen an extremely annoyed look, then rolled his eyes and set his chin back on the platform with a huff.

“We’re only here because you _dragged_ me here, _Bodyguard._ ”

So that was how they were going to play it.  Jigen scoffed.  “Yeah, cuz one of these days you’re gonna shoot _me_ if you don’t get your damn eyes checked out.”

“Might shoot you anyway,” Lupin grumbled.

“What was that?” Jigen snapped back.

“Nothing, nothing,” Lupin hurried on, voice suddenly turning light and trilling.  He popped up over the eye-checking machine and, putting his hands atop it and his chin on the backs of his fingers, gazed down at the poor young woman, now as turned on as she was afraid.  “My dear, is he scaring you?  I can ask the _big brute_ to leave…”

Her eyes went wide, reflecting the diffuse yellow light shining through the lenses of the machine.

Jigen heaved a sigh. “Just get out of here without committing any felonies, okay?”

“A felony? On this poor beautiful soul?  Why would I do that?”  Lupin sent his victim a charming grin, white teeth sparkling as much as his eyes, and then set a well-timed wink upon her person. 

And for her part, the young woman did not swoon; she did not melt.  Nor did she run.  She merely stared back at Lupin like the lion he was and cried,

“Who _are_ you people?!”

“Nobody, if you know what’s good for you,” was Jigen’s answer.  “Please get on with it—he’ll do this all day if you let him, and”—here he turned to Lupin—“You know you owe me extra every time I have to watch your back while you bang someone.”

“P-pardon…?” the young woman squeaked.

Meanwhile, Lupin sucked in a breath, squeezed his eyes shut—and then, apparently unable to hit the ball back against Jigen’s pitch, huffed, “ _Why_ must you _insist_ on ruining my _charm_ today?!  Did someone die on you again or something?!”

Jigen’s teeth gritted reflexively.  “No, but thanks for reminding me.”

Lupin’s lips pursed.  He glared off at the wall, away from all of them, then eventually sunk back down into his seat with a growling sigh.  He gave the woman an apologetic gaze momentarily, one that almost made it Jigen’s way.  “…Sorry.”

Jigen sucked in a tight breath, unable to keep it down, and took a moment to run a hand over his face as he shook his head.  But, when he finally let out the breath, it wasn’t as indignant as it’d been a moment earlier.

Finally, it seemed he’d cowed him into it.  Now if only they could get an honest exam done, he had hope that everything would be fine…

“So by ‘clear,’ what do you mean, exactly?” Lupin muttered rather grudgingly. “Like, it’s bigger? Or thicker, or…? Cuz I can see them all down to the bottom, I just have to, you know, squint. But they’re all fuzzy, it’s just one is thicker lines than the other so I don’t really get what you’re asking me.  The thicker one’s always gonna look better, right?  Because it’s thicker.”

The woman paused, clearly wondering if he was making another joke at first, and weaseling out of things second, then said, “Not if you’re far-sighted.  So, I guess…out of each pair, which one makes you squint less hard?”

“Oh,” he said.  “I see.”

At that, she finally smiled, and the tension in Jigen’s gut eased a bit as Lupin finally, _finally_ settled in for the rest of the test.

“Heh…that was a good one,” Lupin noted of himself.

“It was,” she replied gently, clicking another lens into place.  “Still using only your left eye, tell me which one of these is clearer: this one”— _click_ —“or this one?”

…Though Jigen was still mentally making bets with himself on whether or not Lupin would get her number by the end of all this.

 

Measuring Lupin’s eyes for the focal distance had gone over about as well as he’d expected (“Aw man, there’s _more_?”), but eventually, while Jigen read the newspaper in the public part of the store, Lupin had tried on a few pairs of glasses to placate him.  On the third or fourth he’d gone very quiet, looking at them rather morosely in his hands, and then announced, “I’m headed out for a smoke.  Be back in a sec.”

“Sure. I’m gonna hit the can.”

And it was as Jigen was returning to humanity that he bumped into the young ophthalmologist, a small, square paper in her hands.

“Well!  It turns out that you’ve grown a bit near-sighted, with a slight astigmatism in one eye.  But it’s just a bit.  It’s a +.75 in one eye and—oh, where did your friend go?”

Jigen sat back down in one of the two leather waiting chairs, picking up a different section of the paper to read (with his still perfect eyes, thank you very much).  “Taking a smoke,” he announced, nodding over his shoulder.

She peered toward the window, head bobbing this way and that like a small prey animal looking out of its nest, until her brow quirked down.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I—” Jigen almost got the entire sentence out before it hit him why she was asking.

He turned in the chair, newspaper falling off his lap. 

“That idiot,” he hissed. 

_He didn’t._

But upon close inspection up and down the street, he _had_.

_He left me!_

Jigen looked at the woman, and a moment later, she looked back at him, trembling under his gaze.

_…With the bill!_

The stare Jigen leveled the poor little ophthalmologist with knocked about a year off her life, judging by how wide her eyes went.

Muttering obscenities in his head and planning exactly the amount of hell he was going to give Lupin when he caught up to him (and wondering how much he should try to see if he’d been kidnapped), Jigen gritted his teeth and held out his hand to the woman.

“I’ll pay the bill,” he stated, “with a tip for your troubles.  Just give me that please, confidentiality laws be damned.”

The lady handed it to him without hesitation, though her arm was stiff as a board.

It just made Jigen stick another hundred in her hand in return.  Which he was definitely, definitely going to invoice Lupin for.

 _I’ll get you for this,_ Jigen grumbled in his best Zenigata impression as he stepped out the door, _Just as soon as I figure out where the hell Fujiko parked._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to include Fujiko more than normal in this fic, and it sort of worked. Some Lupin/Jigen snuck in there toward the end, sorry het-only readers. >_>

The sizzle of bacon and eggs was going on the stovetop when the door to the hideout opened, the key loud in the lock.  Jigen knew who it would be, since everyone else was already in residence—Fujiko and Goemon were enjoying the pregame commentary of a championship sumo tournament on the TV in the living room, and he, of course, was safe and sound and cooking right there in the kitchen.

Still, he was vaguely surprised that Lupin didn’t decide to wait until everyone was asleep to sneak in, if he was going to be gone for this long.  But, he was even more surprised that Lupin hadn’t returned immediately in the first place. If he was feeling wronged, it was his MO to beat them all home to get however many hours to himself, and possibly change the locks in the meantime just to spite them.

So, cooking dinner in his apron as he was, Jigen peered over his shoulder at the hallway and waited for him to come by. 

The slip of a man that was their boss—and, he should really admit by now, their squirrelly little _tech guy_ —leaned down over the couchback and gave Fujiko a kiss, his hand sliding down her arm; followed by giving Gomeon an amicable thump on the shoulder once he straightened up. 

Greetings done, he plunked himself down on the armrest and asked them about their day and the dinner and the upcoming match in the friendliest of tones, his hands crossed on his knee like nothing at all was amiss. And they acquiesced; but finally, once they had twittered back and forth and the conversation had lulled and the commercials had come on, Lupin glanced over his shoulder at Jigen.

Lupin knew what he had done. He knew why it was unacceptable, too. Jigen, likewise, knew that sometimes shit like that was just necessary to deal with yourself, though he couldn’t for the life of himself figure out what Lupin was hung up _about_.  So in the end, all that went between them was an annoyed look from Jigen and a guilty one from Lupin. 

After that, Lupin slid into his usual place on the couch and Jigen went back to cooking.

 

“So where’d you go,” Jigen asked with careful lightness as he sat down at the kitchen bar, plate clinking down as he did so.  Fujiko and Goemon were on the floor eating around the couch’s coffee table, enraptured by the first round of wrestling and occasionally shouting at the TV.  Lupin, however, had wandered over silently, and was apparently willing to brave the danger of eating next to him.

“Just went for a walk.” Lupin, staring resolutely at his plate, shrugged and pulled up a fork.  “Thanks for this.”

“Welcome.” Jigen poured himself a drink then sent the juice over Lupin’s way, all the while surreptitiously stealing glances at his dinner partner and taking care to keep his voice neutral.  Lupin was probably here to test the waters, and he didn’t want to scare him off—though he also wasn’t ready to forgive him. “Wasn’t sure if you were going to come back for dinner, to be honest.”

“I wasn’t either.”

Jigen raised an eyebrow inwardly, but Lupin staunchly ignored every opportunity to look at him.

“So where did your walk take you?” Jigen tried instead, after a moment of watching the TV.  “Over the course of _seven_ hours.”

Lupin’s fingers twitched ever so slightly on his fork, after which point he stabbed at his steak salad with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t want to discuss it,” he muttered, shoveling the greens into his mouth.

“All right,” Jigen offered back with an honest shrug as Lupin began to crunch with pointed volume.  “But next time you want to ditch me, let me know so I don’t think you’ve been kidnapped.”

“That’s not how ditching works is it?”

It was supposed to be a joke, but the lightheartedness never quite made it into his voice.

Jigen let that sit for a second—let the guilt get trickle into Lupin’s porous soul—then shrugged, noncommittal, taking up his own salad.  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Lupin huffed and shoved some eggs in his mouth.  “Whatever.”

“You owe me for it.”

“Fine, send me an invoice,” he rattled off testily. “How much was it?”

“Five hundred.”

“What?!” Lupin squawked, a cranberry flying off his fork. “What part of town were we _in_?”

Jigen refused to look up, going for his drink instead. “Had to give that poor girl you terrorized some serious hush money.”

“So you dropped half a grand on—? Ugh, never mind.  Fine; I’ll pay it, just so that we don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

Even as Lupin descended into his bacon and eggs with a surly face, Jigen smiled slightly, under the brim of his hat.

“Tell you what.  You pay me back for the exams and you foot the bill for the glasses, and we’ll call it even.  The glasses will be two to three hundred, but knowing you, more like six or seven.  So It’ll come out about even.”

“Fucking expensive glasses,” Lupin muttered.  “The ones I use for disguises are five bucks.”

“Yeah, those are prefab readers, dumbass.  I know for a fact you’ve spent twice that on a purse for Fujiko before.  Triple on a pair of her shoes. And—”

“All right, all right, I get it.  Let’s just eat, okay?” Lupin looked over his shoulder sullenly at the others, at which point they both turned forward just the _slightest_ bit.  “Erg…”

“All right…” Jigen agreed, keeping his concern on his boss all the same.  Lupin seemed tired these days, from all the headaches Jigen figured, but something about the lines in his face as their eyes met for just a moment seemed more worn than usual. They were etched into his skin like some form of misery as his eyes flickered down and he went about eating the rest of his salad, his elbow on the counter and his cheek in his hand.

…Even though Jigen had made one of his favorite dishes.

 

Later that night, dinner finished and dishes washed, the Lupin Group found itself tucked into the couch. Lupin was in the middle, with Fujiko fast asleep on his chest to the right. Jigen was on his left side, slouched into his favorite groove, his feet on the ottoman. Goemon was on the floor, on the rug, to the free side of Fujiko, passed out asleep with his back against the front of the couch and his head against her legs.

The show they had watched had just ended, but Jigen, the only one with a free hand for the remote, didn’t move to start the next installment. He was still a little frosty about everything, but as he looked over at his boss, determined to say something about it, he caught a sad, pensive look on the man’s profile in the blue light of the screen, and the frustration drained out of him.

“You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you,” Lupin volunteered, not even looking at him.

Jigen took a deep breath, and for a long time, he wasn’t sure how to respond. But when found his voice, to his own surprise, it came out almost casual.

“I need to be honest with you,” Jigen admitted, turning so that he rested his elbow on the couch back and his chin in his hand—though careful not to move so much as to wake the others. “What’s your hangup about needing glasses? It’s not that weird, you know. Most everyone needs ‘em eventually.”

Lupin was silent for a long time, brow furrowed, and even after a long sigh, he didn’t say anything.

Eventually, Jigen huffed and turned back forward, readying to stand. “Fine. Good night, then.”

Just as he was about to take the first step, Lupin reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. “Wait,” he whispered.

Unsure, Jigen settled back down, and Lupin took his hand back, settling it in his lap vapidly.

“My dad wore glasses,” Lupin admitted quietly, glaring at the floor. “And he was _such_ an asshole.”

Jigen wasn’t sure whether to laugh or yell.  “Not everyone who wears glasses is your father,” he sputtered.  “Much less an asshole.”

“I’m not saying that,” Lupin tisked with a grumble, lowering his voice when Fujiko stirred a little. “It’s just…it reminds me of him every time I look in the mirror.” He bit his lip, his voice turning into a hush.  “And I really…don’t like that.”

Jigen knew what the man had done to him as a child and beyond, even though they didn’t talk about it much, and certainly not sober. So, the gears slowly turning, Jigen eventually offered softly, “So get a different style than his were.  Or hell, wear contacts.”    

Lupin huffed, but not the aggressively annoyed type like he’d been doing all day hence.  It was more…defeated, Jigen thought, staring into the darkness beyond the TV.

“I guess that’s all that can be done, huh? It’s just…you know. I don’t want to admit to myself that I’m that much like him.”

A quiet moment went by, in which Lupin grew very tense. Jigen frowned.

“You’re nothing like him,” Jigen replied gently.  “And that’s what we love about you.”

This statement was met with silence.  Lupin’s jaw tightened, and he got that faraway look in his eye that Jigen knew meant he was getting locked in his own mind. 

The time for a response dragged on, and Jigen eventually realized he wasn’t going to get one just staring at him. So he laid his head on his own arm and closed his eyes, knowing Lupin would say something once it had time to percolate to the surface. And it took a while; in fact, Jigen was just about to fall asleep where he sat when there was a rustling nearby.

“Jigen...”

He grunted.

“It’s cold over here.”

Jigen heaved a sigh and shifted closer.  Even with Fujiko on his chest, Lupin quickly leaned his head onto his gunman’s shoulder.  He didn’t say anything, but Jigen felt him shiver.

Soon, Jigen sighed and, finding his groove in the couch again, leaned his head on top of Lupin’s and searched out his hand on the couch to cover with his own.

“I just want you to stop hurting,” he whispered into his hair. “That’s all.”

Lupin was silent for a while, but eventually he snuggled in, burrito-ing between them.  Like that, leaning on Jigen’s sturdy shoulder and trapped by Fujiko’s tender warmth, the tension that had been building for months finally bled out of him the slightest bit.

As Jigen was finally getting to sleep in that dark, warm drifting space that precipitated dreams, he thought he heard Lupin whisper,

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

Lupin could be a handful, it was true. But he was also a wonderful person when he wasn’t stressed out.  Flirtatious, whimsical, and even gentlemanly…it was what his entire crew simultaneously envied and admired about him. And today, Fujiko and Jigen were genuinely excited about seeing their boss’s flamboyant side come out as they drove the yellow fiat into a particular neighborhood.

“Here we are,” Jigen announced, putting the car in park.

From the back seat, leaning across Fujiko’s body, Lupin eyed the little hole-in-the-wall shop and sighed, wilting down onto her ample chest.

“What’s wrong?” Jigen asked. He thought they were _over_ this. Had last night not been enough? Was he still to get no relief from this situation? “Not to your taste?” he tried.

Lupin sighed again and melted further into his lover, even as Fujiko scratched his scalp reassuringly. “It’s nothing…” he mumbled miserably.

“Hey.” Jigen reached over and laid a worn hand on Lupin’s shoulder, as it was the only thing he could reach from the awkward angle.  “You sound like I’m sending you to the slaughterhouse. I’m fixing your _eyes_. Think of it like a hat shop.”

“I hate hats,” Lupin muttered, laboriously pulling himself away from his girlfriend and blood brother and thrusting the car door open. 

“But you look so _good_ in them. You _know_ this. We’ve been _over_ this, in fact. You’ll look good in these too, I promise—”

“Yeah yeah…”

Fujiko and Jigen shared a look as the door shut.  Fujiko shrugged. Jigen sighed.

“He tell you anything about what’s going on with him?” Jigen grumbled, making sure to eye Lupin out the window lest he try to run for it again.

“No,” she replied after doing the same. She took a deep breath before opening her own door, careful not to puncture the leather with her heel.  “Try as I might.  Must not be the sort of thing you tell a lady.”

Jigen’s lips pursed, putting together the pieces he knew so far.  He stared at the steering wheel, then nodded to himself and followed the rest. “I’ll see what I can do.”

A moment after Fujiko did the same, he closed the door with a decisive swing. He lifted the keyfob nonchalantly, checking this way and that as he beeped the lock. The coast seemed clear, but they were _expected,_ so it was always good to check anyway.

Lupin, for his part, just gave the two of them a surly look from beside the shop door and then slunk off inside, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched.  “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

              

The shop wasn’t so randomly picked as the first; it was a discrete and reputable place that just so happened to also cut stolen gems in the back. But it also had fashionable upmarket styles that Jigen figured his friend would like.

And not about to let Lupin get away this time, Fujiko and Jigen set him into a corner with a brightly lit mirror and then proceeded to bring him glasses to try on, one after another, until there was a mountain of them and Lupin was never more than a foot from someone’s side.

“I’m not gonna run away again,” he grumbled, seeing this.

“I would love to believe you but I have no reason to,” Jigen replied slickly, coming up behind him and slipping a pair of glasses onto Lupin’s face.  His hair was soft and sleek under his fingers, and Jigen made sure to give him half a noogie before he took his hands away just to spite him.

The frames were big ones, not unlike a bad decision from the Seventies.

“Oh my God, I look like Albert,” Lupin groaned, immediately pulling them off and rather unceremoniously clattering them down on the counter beside him.  “ _Next_.”

“Who’s Albert?” Jigen asked. 

He turned to Fujiko. She shrugged from where she stood by the colored-plastic frames. “No clue.”

“No one you need to know, thank God,” Lupin continued to himself.  He picked up another pair sitting in the wings, as if to distract himself.  “Oh no these are even worse, I look like Aunt Mildred.”

And indeed, the glasses had wings.

“You have an _aunt_?” Jigen sputtered.

“Named _Mildred_?” Fujiko gasped.

“She wasn’t my real aunt and she isn’t around anymore…we hope,” he finished cryptically.  “Though these would look okay if I had my blond wig, I suppose…”

They both watched him from their spots on the floor, only to have him almost immediately shake his head in distaste. “No. Next.”

He handed them off to Jigen this time at least, not the counter, and Jigen, like a faithful butler, took them.

“I feel like I should have a towel over my arm and be asking you for your choice of tea, My Lord,” he grumbled, changing his accent.

Lupin snorted.  “I could stand to see you in a three-piece, it’s true. Maybe I could call you Jeeves all week to make up for this whole cherade.”

“Hey now don’t be mean to your friends when they’re doing something nice for you and spending their valuable time with you,” Fujiko chided kindly, coming over with a stack of three or four colored frames.  “Try these.”

They were, Jigen realized, all the colors of his favorite suit jackets.

_Damn, wish I’d thought of that._

Lupin frowned at them at first, curious, but then slowly started trying them, tilting his head this way and that and commenting on how they brightened up his eyes or not.

“These have personality, but ah, I already stand out enough as it is. Wouldn’t want to pidgeonhole myself into one suit color all the time.”

“You can get more than one pair, you know,” Fujiko offered as Jigen went off to consider the bendable frames.  “One for the car, one for the office…” she leaned in over his shoulder and whispered into his ear, “One for heists…”

Lupin looked at the two of them in the mirror—through a pair of lenses—and he had to admit, it wasn’t too bad.  He squeezed at her hand as she slunk off his shoulder.

“Well, I’ll put the blue ones in the maybe pile, okay?”

“Success,” Fujiko chimed. “Girlfriend: one, best friend: nothing. As always.”

“An early lead means nothing in a horse race,” Jigen replied instantly as he came back over. “Now let’s see if we can get you something you _actually like_. Have you tried these bendable kinds? They might suit your needs well, though there isn’t much frame to speak of, so they’re easier to lose and scratch.”

“Hmm…” Lupin looked honestly intrigued, and twisted them around in his hands. “Woah…what is this? A non-Newtonian fluid?  A hypersolid?”

“The magic of American engineering, obviously,” Jigen encouraged with a smile. “Young master.”

Lupin gave him a pointed look, but then snorted.  “All right Jeeves, down boy.”

“I will not, sir.”

“You will, or it’ll be a pence off your pay.”

“Oh heavens, a pence?  I shan’t hardly eat for a week!”

“God…I can’t with you sometimes.” Lupin hung his head, defeated, and tried on the glasses.

They looked pretty good.  Bookish, but in an entirely old-money sort of way.

“You look extremely nondescript,” Jigen noted.

“Exactly as it should be.” Lupin nodded, self-satisfied.

He turned this way and that, struck a pose or two, then handed them to Jigen.

“Thank you, Jeeves, let’s set those in the ‘good thoughts’ pile.”

“As you wish, my liege.”

“Am I a demon now?”

“If you weren’t before it was simply an oversight of language on my part.”

“…I see.”

“But do you?” Jigen asked. “ _See_?”

They stared at each other.  Jigen cracked a grin. Lupin sighed.

Then he turned back to Fujiko, just now arriving with more, without even a word.

“Harsh,” Jigen muttered at his back, crestfallen.

“Though I suppose you deserve a point, maybe a point and a half,” Lupin said, as he welcomed Fujiko with a kiss.

Jigen pumped a fist. “Girlfriend falls behind again.”

“I’ll get you yet, you dastardly kids, and your talking dog too,” she chuckled, setting a few pairs on the counter and setting one in Lupin’s palm.  They were all brown and small, fairly rectangular.  “Here. Try this one.”

Lupin the one pair up, considering it.  “Oh,” he said, unfolding them. “These are like my fake ones.”

“Exactly. So we already know they look good on your face.”  As he put them on, completely studious in the mirror, she sidled up behind him and ran her hands down his sides, culminating in locking them together around his front, by his belt buckle.  “I’ve always liked the intellectual look on you…Professor,” she whispered into his ear.

Lupin’s eyes fluttered shut with a shiver and when he opened them, he was seeing himself in a little better light. And Fujiko’s piercing eyes, head resting on his shoulder, staring him down too with their beautiful color.

He could feel her heartbeat against his back, her warm curves against his sides…her tender, sneaky hands on his front. And the view of them…it wasn’t bad, like this.  He didn’t even look much like his father.

Just as his heart started to sink down that thought trail, Jigen’s sharp gaze descended into view as well, his chin sitting on Lupin’s other shoulder. “I like those,” he hummed, hands sliding down Lupin’s waist until both tipped into his front pockets.

“Jigen, get your own sexy professor,” Fujiko hissed, slapping at Jigen’s left hand. Jigen chuckled, sliding that hand into Lupin’s back pocket—while Fujiko’s snuck into the newly-empty space…and her other, into Lupin’s still-free back pocket.

Lupin’s breath hitched and he straightened, a short noise of excitement escaping him. Jigen pulled his now _firmly_ nerdy little tech guy into him, another kiss going onto his neck. Fujiko, never one to miss out on a chance to pose, mirrored the gesture and nibbled at Lupin’s ear a little, pressing her soft curves into him.

“But pick whichever you like best, of course,” she whispered into his ear.

“Maybe we’ll have some fun later, if you do,” he promised.

As Lupin watched them in the mirror, eyes round through the frames, Fujiko and Jigen both nibbled an earlobe of his. Lupin’s toes curled within their shoes, a “hreeee” of a giggle escaping him. Tension shot up his spine; Fujiko, as the two of them drew away, goosed him while no one was looking.

Well…no one but old Mrs. Goldwater, who seemed to be enjoying the whole thing.

Lupin was shivering with an “oh my” and readjusting himself in his clothing while Jigen walked off to look at the sunglasses section. Fujiko stayed by his side though, remaining the moral support and guard too.

“I hope you find something you like,” she said quietly. “You deserve something nice, now and again.”

When he glanced at her, blushing, she added, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, “And you know, we need you back in top shape.  I’d hate it if something happened to you because you were too stubborn to get some glasses, of all things.”

Before he could say anything, she put a kiss on his cheek, her hand lingering on his other cheek for a bit before she slid away, out into the room.

Lupin, his heart all worked up and hammering in his chest, watched her go. Cheeks still tingling, he gazed down at the simple specs in his hands, wondering what exactly had just happened.

And then, as he stared over at Jigen’s handsome backside, and Fujiko’s alluring profile, the answer hit him, and he giggled to himself.

His friends cared about him, and were attracted to an intelligent type to boot. Who knew? 

It sure was a nice compliment, though.

Lupin quickly but quietly folded the frames and put them in the “top choices” pile.

“…And another point goes to the girlfriend,” he whispered to himself, “though I think Jigen deserves an honorable mention, after this.”

 

* * *

 

“Boy, that old couple sure was nice, letting you two get all over me in there,” Lupin said with a starry-eyed grin as they walked out to the car.

“And still delivering the goods under budget, too. Yeah, the Goldwaters are nice that way. Coupla old hippies, really,” Jigen replied.

“Though I can’t believe she asked us to come back and finish the performance,” Fujiko laughed. “Jesus.”

Jigen just chuckled in response. He’d do it if she would.

“And the colors! So many!” their boss twittered on, cheerfully oblivious. “Way more than I was expecting, I guess I haven’t gone shopping for them in a long time, even with the disguises...”

Finally, Lupin was starting to sound like his old sunny self again.  Jigen smiled as he opened the driver’s-side door, until—

“Do you think they’ll tell everyone in the underworld about this?”

“What, that you need a pair of readers?” Fujiko wondered, opening her own door.

“Yeah…”

Lupin was gazing at the storefront, one hand on the car top and the other on the open door’s frame.  The only thing either of his partners could see of him was the heavy set of his shoulders, from the back.

“I mean, one way or another, probably?” Jigen offered up. “Mrs. Goldwater likes to talk and you know they sell all the info that comes through their doors save for who’s buying the diamonds.  But who’s going to care?  You’re over thirty, you’re allowed.”  He tossed his hair over his shoulder with a snort.  “C’mon, get in, we’ll buy you lunch—”

“And gelato,” Fujiko cut in.

“—Like we promised.”

“Well…” Even though he shut the car door with some finality, Lupin’s voice was distant as he drifted down into his seat.  “You’re probably right…”

But as the engine hummed to life and everyone buckled in, Lupin _did_ lean over and give his lady lover a peck on the cheek. “It’ll be harder to kiss you with a wall of glass on my face.”

Fujiko turned her head and deftly captured Lupin’s lips with her own, and in the rearview mirror, Jigen politely turned his attention back to the road. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” she whispered, smiling down into Lupin’s dark eyes. Ones which, soon, would have much less trouble focusing on her.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, the glasses arrived. Fujiko was off at the beach when the call came in, so it was just Lupin and Jigen heading out to get them. To Jigen’s surprise, Lupin sat through the frame adjustments patiently, even studiously. Jigen, as always, had watched his back from a few feet away, tall and intimidating. But when it was done, the spectacles had been packed up in their fancy case, Jigen had ruffled Lupin’s hair, and they’d shared a shoulder pat before departing. In fact, Jigen was so happy he’d walked with his arm around Lupin’s shoulder all the way to the nearby park’s food trucks, where they eventually had lunch.

As they were sitting at the picnic table, Lupin took out his new eyewear and, after a moment of consideration, put them on. Jigen glanced up from his burger to suddenly spot him with them on, looking around a bit like they were bird watching binoculars.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, looking at the menu on the nearest truck, which was well beyond Jigen’s shoulder, “I can read that!” he turned quickly to the nearest street sign, and then the local subway station marquee.  “Oh, and that! And that too!  But without it…” he pulled off his glasses, just enough to look over them. “Ugh, without them, it’s just a garbled mess…”

Jigen followed his gaze, nodding agreeably. “No wonder your head hurt all the time. Your brain is all scrambled.”

“Hey…” Lupin pushed the glasses back up his nose like he’d been doing it for years. Jigen grinned, a little more than playfully, catching it out of the corner of his eye.

“Heh. Well, the good news is, your prescription is .75 one way and .5 the other. Enough to get you killed at 35 yards but basically a result of staring at a computer screen and tiny gadgets two feet in front of your face in dim lighting too long for months on end. In other words, you’re just getting older, it’s not a brain tumor like we thought.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Lupin is went back to his food, stopping for a moment as he lifted it to his face, like he wasn’t quite sure where the actual thing was in relation to his mouth.  He moved it back and forth a bit, then shook his head and, closing his eyes, made it there.

“And you?” he asked as he chewed. “What was yours?”

“Gross,” Jigen noted. “But: Forty/twenty last time I checked.”

“What?” Lupin gaped incredulously—and then remembering to swallow. “That’s _possible_?”

“Used to be better,” he admitted, trying not to look _too_ judgmental about what he’d just had to see with his wonderful eyesight. “See, even I gotta eat more carrots.”

“Jesus…”

Jigen winked and leaned in to ruffle his hair.

“Don’t fret, _mon cheri_. Thick as thieves, remember?”

Lupin let out a throaty chuckle at that, and then leaned his head into Jigen’s hand. “Thanks, man.”

Jigen nodded and sat back, taking up his chopsticks and pulling up some lo mein with them. “Now, I just hope you’re gonna actually use ‘em.”

Lupin waved his hand as if this were not an issue, then tried to set it on his forehead, but the glasses got in the way. So he did some creative rearranging, albeit with a fingerprint on them now.

“…And clean them properly,” Jigen added. “Don’t be that dick that can’t even clean his own glasses.  I refuse to be your mother about it, this was hard enough.”

“You have so much faith in me, Jigen,” Lupin quipped. But once he finally got his chin settled in his hand, he smiled.   The look in his eye—through the glasses—was soft.

For a while, his dark blue eyes just tracked over his best friend’s face.

“Wh-what…?”

“Nothing,” Lupin said. “Just enjoying looking at every pore in your skin.”

“…Great.”

Jigen bit into his twirl of noodles.  Lupin chuckled, but even as he took up his own food again, his eyes kept flashing up to Jigen’s.

“…What?”

“I’ve never noticed how much I liked your laugh lines,” he whispered, smiling gently.

“I have laugh lines?” Jigen groused warily.

“Yes,” Lupin stated with a musing smile. “You do.”

Jigen frowned down at his food, touching at his face with a finger, but Lupin was still chuckling.

“With any luck, I’ll see you make some more.”

This time, it was Jigen’s turn to catch a wink and blush.

 

* * *

 

That night, Fujiko and Goemon had already gone to bed while Jigen and Lupin were reading on the couch (now that Lupin could, again). Jigen had a magazine open on his lap and was contemplating hopping in the shower when Lupin suddenly closed his book and leaned back, his head tipped back.

But he didn’t close his eyes; he simply stared at the ceiling absently. He stayed like that for a long time, in the quiet and the amber shadows, just gazing at nothing but the pattern in the ceiling.

“What’s up?” Jigen wondered. “The glasses feel okay?”

“Am I getting old?” Lupin asked him, by way of the ceiling. “Am I losing my touch?”

Jigen raised an eyebrow, momentarily glancing at the book to wonder what had caused this. “If you’re old, I’ve got some bad news about me.”

But Lupin’s return hum was somber, the joke totally flying by him. It must really have been bothering him, so Jigen closed his magazine and waited patiently while his boss stared at the ceiling some more.

“If I…if it gets worse, will you stop working with me?” Now, he finally turned to look at Jigen. “If I can’t see anymore someday, will you all leave me?”

Jigen took a deep breath, struck by the quiet, but very deep, concern in that look. “I think it’s important to point out here that you aren’t going blind—you just need some reading glasses because you’re getting near-sighted from a combo of not taking care of yourself and normal aging.”

“I know that, but…” Lupin sighed, turning back front, his eyes downcast. “What if it gets worse over time, and I lose a contact in the middle of a job and can’t reliably shoot my way out? Will you leave me behind, or come back to help me?”

Jigen frowned. It was true, their rules left every man for himself and if he couldn’t pull his weight, he got left behind. But the same could not be said for people in distress. Their rules were to help people in need, which Lupin would qualify for at that point.

“And regardless,” Lupin continued before he could answer, “Should I put you all in that position? Or should I just hang up my hat?”

Jigen sighed through his nose this time and ran a soothing hand through his own hair. “Is that what you’ve been worried about all this time?” he wondered incredulously. “How your eyesight affects your leadership capacity? Look, I’m not leaving you behind. And I know for a fact that Goemon never would. Fujiko…well, she’d leave you behind but it’d probably be in a nice safe doorway somewhere, with a note attached, and she’d even ring the doorbell for you.”

Lupin smirked at that. Jigen reached out and ruffled his hair, at which point Lupin’s smile turned a little more relaxed.

“A contact falling out is the same as a gun jamming—we’d figure something out,” Jigen reassured. “And you know…if you ever get too blind or deaf or infirm—that’s what proteges are for. Though I think you’ve got quite a few years left until then.”

When Jigen took his hand back, Lupin was looking at him with a strange sort of concern.

“…Is that what you’re worried about?” Jigen whispered, finally getting it. “Not your dad, or your job, but getting old and dying?”

Lupin’s lips pursed and he shrugged, looking off. “It has a way of making you think about it…”

Jigen sighed inwardly, and as Lupin slowly leaned away from him, as if physically trying to lead him in, Jigen decided to take the bait. He wrapped an arm around Lupin’s shoulders and pulled him near.

“I’ll be here to the end, you know that.”

“I know, but thank you for saying so.” Lupin sighed, leaning into him. He was smiling, a sad, contemplative sort. “I think…it just made me realize I like what I have, and I need to take care of it more. But I’m not sure how to do that, exactly…”

Jigen nodded, then deciding on his answer, snugged Lupin tight. “Just downshift. You don’t have to give anything up, just go from forth gear to third.”

Lupin tilted his head, nonplussed, but eventually nodding. “I see.”

“Do you?”

This time, when Lupin pulled away from him to look upon his face—glasses and all—he smiled.

“I do.”

His eyes were finally back to the depthless softness that Jigen so enjoyed gazing into.

“Good,” Jigen declared, settling back into his spot. “And besides,” he said, kicking back, “I wouldn’t leave you for anything. I’m too old to acclimate to another syndicate, and you’re officially too cute with those glasses for any of us to ever want to walk away from.”

Lupin chuckled and ran a shy hand over his head, resting on the back of his neck. “Thanks, partner.”

“Anytime,” Jigen whispered back with a wink. “Professor.”

Lupin snorted and chuckled, and this time they both shared a laugh that was just a bit sweeter—and stronger—than the rest.

And with it, Jigen thought, they’d finally unwound all the mysteries.

 

* * *

 

A few weeks later, Lupin had taken to wearing his glasses most of the time. And, this particular morning, sun was streaming through the California condo with Fujiko on the balcony in a sun lounger, Goemon at the gym downstairs, Jigen cooking, and Lupin twittering over machine parts at the breakfast table.

It was as Jigen was getting all the bacon turned over that Lupin held up this morning’s gadget, mad-scientist like, proclaiming, “Jigen look! I figured it out! I got all the functionality into it!”

Jigen looked over from the kitchen stove.  The bobbles and gears had been around for days, swept into larger and larger piles each morning. “And what is that?”

Lupin, giggling, brought the little machine over, setting the metronome-looking water-bobber on the counter.  It rolled around on its tiny tank tracks, and then stopped with a click and shot Jigen with a spray of water.

“…Charming.”

“It'll work perfectly with acid or fake blood!  Think of the uses!  Damn the internet is great! This afternoon, I’m gonna retrofit the Roomba to water the plants while we’re gone…”

And off he went, giggling madly to himself into the room, possibly to read the paper, possibly to bother Fujiko. He wasn’t sure, but still, Jigen shook his head and went back to the bacon.  “…Mission accomplished,” the hitman whispered to himself, a smile finally back on his face.


End file.
